Magna Powertrain, a group of Magna International Inc., a global top five tier-one supplier in the auto industry, announced on August 16 that Magna Powertrain (Changzhou) Co. Ltd., had been established and put into production in the Changzhou National Hi-Tech District in Jiangsu, where the company has founded the first engineering (R&D) center in this district of China, besides the already-existing manufacturing facility.

On the 16th Aug., Mr. Guenther Apfalter, President of Magna Powertrain Europe and Asia, said in Changzhou that the investment in Magna Powertrain (Changzhou) Co. Ltd. totaled 50 million US dollars.

Magna Powertrain (Changzhou) Co. Ltd. is producing and will assemble in its serial production Transmission Oil Pumps, Mass Balancer Systems, Power Take Off units including a small die casting operation including subsequent machining processes to ensure an optimized vertical integration. Around 130 employees are currently producing products for SGM and 2010 onwards; more than 300 employees will ensure that the customers are satisfied with "the better product for a better price."

In 2006, the sales of Magna International Inc. totaled 24.2 billion US dollars, ranking the 273rd in the Global Fortune 500. The global sales of Magna Powertrain were 3.4 billion US dollars. After investigating many cities in the Yangtze River Delta in 2005, Magna decided to establish a powertrain plant and an R&D center in the Changzhou Hi-Tech District. "We had considered locating our engineering R&D center in Shanghai, but the industrial support and excellent investment environment here persuaded us to land our R&D center in the Changzhou Hi-Tech District. Eventually." According to Xiuzhan Zhu, Headquarter Controller Europe/Asia of Magna Powertrain. The major customers of Magna Powertrain (Changzhou) Co. Ltd. are Shanghai-GM, Ford in America, and companies along that line, and the export for the orders from American Ford accounts for one third of its total orders.

"Our sales in Asia only account for 3% of our total sales and at the same time our sales in the North American market and Europe account for 71% and 26% respectively. Judging from the development trend and forecast from China State Information Center, China will surpass USA and become the largest auto consumption market in the world till 2015. Therefore it is of strategic importance to establish both a factory and an R&D center in China. We hope our market share in Asia will be increased by 10% in the next couple of years," said Xiuzhan Zhu. Of the 19 of the world's top 500 companies currently residing in the Changzhou Hi-Tech District, Magna Powertrain (Changzhou) Co. Ltd. is the first wholly foreign-owned company that has established an R&D center in Changzhou.

The Magna Powertrain Engineering (R&D) Center has had a RMB15 million investment from a couple of months ago up until now, including as much as RMB4 million spent on laboratory testing equipments, and with just over 20 R&D staff. This center has independently developed a testing equipment-lubricating and accelerating test bench with a max performance of 9,000 revolutions per minute. Its performance is comparable to that of big international companies, while its price is only one tenth of theirs. The test bench can incline to a 45-degree angle in all directions at maximum to simulate the performance of various types of vehicles as they travel uphill and downhill, accelerate, decelerate, turn and tilt about on actual roads. And it's also equipped with many precision test sensors for the speed, torque, acceleration, temperature, angle, etc.

The Engineering R&D Center in Changzhou is developing the power takeoff and balancing shaft and other powertrain parts for local Chinese OEMs, it shares the same powertrain development platform with the engineering centers in Europe and North America. The Changzhou Engineering R&D Center will strive to be a supporter of vehicle powertrain engineering in the Asia-Pacific region and strengthen strong design, analysis, program management and testing capabilities for key parts of Engine, Axle, AWD/4x4 and Transmission.

Magna Powertrain plans to put its second testing laboratory into formal use in January 2008, which consists of the MTS static test bench, oil pump test bench, gear boxes test bench, SAE friction test bench, etc. This laboratory will also be opened to external users and serve foreign and Chinese enterprises.

Source: Changzhou National Hi-Tech District